The problem of tragic love in the story by I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday". Read an essay on the theme of love in Bunin’s story “Clean Monday” for free

One of the main themes of the writer’s work is the theme of love. Bunin approached this topic with all his soul, and neither war nor revolution could shake this attachment of his. In this area, full of unexpressed shades and ambiguities, his gift found worthy use. He described love in all states, and in emigration he treated this feeling even more closely and with more concentration. Love in Bunin’s depiction amazes not only with the power of artistic representation, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. But these laws do not often break through to the surface - most people do not experience their fatal impact until the end of their days. Such a depiction of love unexpectedly gives Bunins sober, “merciless” talent a romantic glow. The proximity of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin and were never questioned.

However, the catastrophic nature of existence, the fragility of human relationships and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after the gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia were filled with a new formidable meaning. “Love is beautiful” and “love is doomed” - these concepts, having finally come together, coincided, carrying in the depths of each story the personal grief of Bunin the emigrant. During the war years, Bunin finished a book of stories “ Dark alleys", which came out in in full force in 1946 in Paris. This is the only book in Russian literature that is “all about love.” Thirty-eight short stories in the collection provide a great variety of unforgettable female images- Rusya, Antigone, Galya Ganskaya, the heroine of “Clean Monday”.

In Bunin's story " Clean Monday"The heroine is nameless. The name is not important, the name is for the earth, and God knows everyone even without a name. Bunin calls the heroine - she. From the very beginning, she was strange, silent, unusual, as if a stranger to the whole world around her, looking through it, “kept thinking about something, seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of her.” She seemed to be from a completely different world, and just so that she would not be recognized in this world, she read, went to the theater, had lunch, dinner, went for walks, and attended courses. “We were both rich; healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts they looked at us,” says the hero of “Clean Monday.” It would seem that they have everything for absolute happiness. What else do you need?

“Our happiness, my friend,” his beloved quotes Platon Karataev as saying, “is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.” The hero and heroine of the story are different natures. The hero of “Clean Monday” is an “ordinary” person, for all his physical attractiveness and emotional fullness. But the heroine is different.

In her strange actions one can sense the significance of her character, the rarity of her “chosen nature.” Her mind is torn. She is not averse to plunging into the “today’s” life of that elite Moscow - Chaliapin’s concerts, “kapustniks” Art Theater, some courses, reading fashionable Western writers of the beginning of the century: Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Przybyshevsky, lectures by Andrei Bely, etc., but internally she is alien (like Bunin himself) to all this. She was always drawn to something lighter, intangible, to faith, to God, and just as the Church of the Savior was close to the windows of her apartment, so God was close to her heart. She often went to churches, visited monasteries and old cemeteries. She is intensely looking for something whole, heroic, selfless and finds her ideal in serving God. The present seems pitiful and untenable to her.

And finally she made up her mind. IN last days She drank the cup of worldly life to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and cleansed herself of the ashes of this life on “Clean Monday”: she went to a monastery. “No, I’m not fit to be a wife.”

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I. A. Bunin considered the story “Clean Monday” one of his best works. In fact, one cannot treat this story with indifference. The plot of the story is relatively simple. It's about love. But the love story is completely extraordinary. In general, in Bunin’s work we encounter a special perception of it. This wonderful feeling most often does not bring joy, does not make people happy, on the contrary, it makes them suffer and suffer. Love becomes a test of fate and at the same time a punishment from above. In the story “Clean Monday” we encounter just such a situation when love does not bring happiness.

The story contains many everyday details. The writer describes in sufficient detail the lives of the main characters. They are young, beautiful, rich. “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that people stared at us in restaurants and at concerts.”

They can be called real darlings of fate. Hardships and sorrows are not familiar to them. We know that the lovers often went to dinner at Prague, the Hermitage, and the Metropol. Young people could simply enjoy every day they live. But everything happens completely differently. Almost immediately, at the very beginning of the story, we begin to anticipate a tragic outcome. The author does not say this directly. It only gives readers the opportunity to pay attention to what is unsaid, to what is only implied. It is very important that the main character does not know where his relationship with the girl is leading. However, the young man believes that it is better not to think about it. He is more pragmatic, prefers to live for today, to get as much joy as possible from the present. And the girl flatly refuses to talk about the future. “I didn’t know how this was going to end, and I tried not to think, not to speculate: it was useless, just like talking to her about it: she once and for all stopped talking about our future...” says the narrator.

The main character of the story from the very beginning seems strange, unlike the others. She is taking courses. But, apparently, he has no clear idea of ​​why he is doing this. It is no coincidence that she very vaguely answers the question of why she is studying. The girl says: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? There is a very important philosophical subtext hidden in this answer. The heroine tries to find the meaning of life, but she fails. Perhaps this is why she decides to find salvation in religion and goes to a monastery.

The main character loves beautiful things. She seems smart, able to carry on a conversation on any topic. But on the other hand, she is almost completely immersed in her inner world. And the outside world seems less interesting to her: “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners outside the city...” The girl leads a lifestyle that seems to be accepted in society. But she herself wants something different. Main character can't help but think about how amazing and incomprehensible their relationship is. The girl does not think about marriage, does not want to become a wife and mother. She's honest about it. The main character is simultaneously drawn to a luxurious life and denies it. This contradiction in her nature seems strange and incomprehensible.

The girl is characterized by an interest in religion. She visits churches, she is drawn to the Kremlin cathedrals. But at the same time, she cannot be called particularly pious, because she leads secular image life, without limiting yourself in anything. However, quite unexpectedly, the girl goes to a monastery. She doesn't explain anything to anyone. He simply leaves his usual life and his loved one. The girl's action was completely unexpected young man. He cannot understand the behavior of his beloved. And in once again thinks about her action, without finding an explanation for it. The heroes of the story separated for a very long time. The young man saw his beloved only two years later. What does the title of the story tell us? The young man found out about the girl’s religiosity on the eve of Clean Monday. Previously, he had never even thought about the fact that his beloved was so interested in religion. This behavior of a young girl seems to us readers to be an amazing discovery. Maybe the heroine considers her life sinful, and wants to find salvation for her soul in the monastery. After all, the girl’s life was full of entertainment, she visited theaters, restaurants, and had a lot of fun.

The heroine finds the strength to abandon everything that was familiar and dear to her. Instead of fun and joy, she chooses life in a monastery. However, if we remember that the girl was indifferent to what surrounded her, you won’t be surprised at her action. Even love did not keep the girl from becoming a nun. What was love for her? Something temporary, unimportant, vain? The ending of the story remains open.

“Clean Monday” is tragic in its essence. He stands apart in Bunin’s work, because here the lovers do not part due to the ill will of fate. The girl chooses her own path. Nobody and nothing bothered the young people. They could be happy, completely dissolving in each other. But it turned out differently. May be, main character was unable to understand and appreciate such a beautiful and sublime feeling? Or there was no place for love in her soul at all, because the heroine seemed to live in her own world. We don’t know what is most important to her, but we can only guess.

In fact, little is known about the main character and it is difficult to understand her. You can perceive her mental torment as evidence of internal dissatisfaction real life. But maybe, on the contrary, she long ago determined what the meaning of her life was. And gradually went to desired result. Ordinary life did not attract the girl, she expected something more. Religion turned out to be more important for her than usual activities and joys. And in this regard, love for a man seemed to the girl less important than love for God.

Of course, only an extraordinary nature can refuse the usual worldly joys. The girl is certainly a strong and extraordinary person. She is looking for her own meaning in life. And leaving for a monastery seems to her the right decision, because now the vanity of a simple and vulgar life will have absolutely no meaning.

The story cannot but evoke feelings of sadness in the reader. But at the same time, the story makes you think about how unique, inimitable and incomprehensible a person can be to others. This is exactly what the main character is. She is unlike anyone else. She has her own choice. And the girl makes the decision on her own, without asking anyone for advice, without needing the approval of others. However, one cannot help but admit that the main character is not so ideal. After all, her act turned out to be a cruel blow for the young man. He suffers from separation from his beloved. Surprisingly, we learn that the girl is also experiencing separation pain. After all, in the letter she writes: “May God give me the strength not to answer me - it is useless to prolong and increase our torment...”. So why did the girl choose her path? Why did she decide to ruin the life of her beloved? It can be concluded that she felt unhappy. And she decided to break with the world in order to forever forget about everything connected with it.

Bunin's story "Clean Monday" tells us about the complexity human life. The role of this work in Russian literature is very great. Thanks to him, we got the opportunity to learn about how tragic the ending of a love story can be.

Based on the story by I. A. Bunin “Clean Monday”

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - greatest writer turn of XIX-XX centuries He entered literature as a poet and created wonderful poetic works. 1895 ...The first story “To the End of the World” is published. Encouraged by the praise of critics, Bunin begins to study literary creativity. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a laureate of various awards, including laureate Nobel Prize on literature 1933

In 1944, the writer created one of the most wonderful stories about love, about the most beautiful, significant and lofty thing on Earth - the story “Clean Monday”. Bunin said about this story of his: “I thank God that He gave me to write, Clean Monday.”

In the story “Clean Monday,” the psychologism of Bunin’s prose and the peculiarities of “external depiction” were especially clearly manifested.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up, the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how the green stars hissed from the wires - the dull blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...” - these are the words with which the author begins his narrative, taking the reader to old Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. Writer with greatest detail, without losing sight of the slightest detail, reproduces all the signs of this era. And from the very first lines the story is given a special sound by the constant mention of details of deep antiquity: about ancient Moscow churches, monasteries, icons (the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Iveron Church, the Martha and Mary Convent, the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands), about names outstanding personalities. But next to this antiquity, eternity, we notice signs of a later way of life: the restaurants “Prague”, “Hermitage”, “Metropol”, “Yar”, known and accessible to the wealthiest layers of citizens; books by contemporary authors; “Motla” by Ertel and Chekhov... Judging by how the action unfolds in the story, we can judge that the past for the heroes is extremely clear, the present is vague, and the future is absolutely unclear.

There are two heroes in the story: he and she, a man and a woman. The man, according to the writer, was healthy, rich, young and handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” But the most important thing is that the hero is in love, so in love that he is ready to fulfill any whim of the heroine, just not to lose her. But, unfortunately, he cannot and does not try to understand what is going on in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” The woman is portrayed as mysterious, enigmatic. She is mysterious, just as the soul of a Russian woman with her spirituality, devotion, dedication, self-denial is mysterious in general... The hero himself admits: “She was mysterious, strange to me.” Her whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” the narrator says, but immediately adds: “Although flowers were still her favorite and unloved, all the books... she always read, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at lunches and dinners she ate as much as me...” When going somewhere, she most often did not know where she would go next, what she would do, in a word, she did not know, with by whom, how and where he will spend his time.

The writer tells us quite fully about her origins and her current activities. But in describing the heroine’s life, Bunin very often uses indefinite adverbs (for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

All a woman’s actions are spontaneous, irrational and at the same time as if planned. On the night of Clean Monday, she gives herself to the hero, knowing that in the morning she will go to the monastery, but whether this departure is final is also unclear. Throughout the entire story, the author shows that the heroine does not feel comfortable anywhere, she does not believe in the existence of simple earthly happiness. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing,” she quotes Platon Karataev.

The emotional impulses of the heroes of “Clean Monday” often defy logical explanation. It seems as if both the man and the woman have no control over themselves, are not able to control their feelings.

The story centers on the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. Forgiveness Sunday is a religious holiday revered by all believers. They ask each other for forgiveness and forgive their loved ones. For the heroine, this is a very special day, not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life. Clean Monday is the first day of Lent, on which a person is cleansed of all filth, when the joy of Maslenitsa gives way to introspection. This day becomes a turning point in the hero's life. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero experiences the influence of surrounding forces and realizes everything that he had not noticed before, being blinded by his love for the heroine. Two years later, the man, remembering the events of days long gone, will repeat the route of their long-standing joint trip, and “for some reason” he will really want to go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. What unknown forces draw him towards his beloved? Does he strive for the spiritual world into which she goes? We don’t know this, the author does not lift the veil of secrecy for us. He only shows us humility in the soul of the hero, their last meeting ends with his humble departure, and not the awakening of his former passions.

The future of the heroes is unclear. Besides everything, the writer does not even directly indicate anywhere that the nun the man met is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. It is noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the first world war. And this service in the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, perhaps, is a spiritual insight for the heroine of “Clean Monday”, because it was the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God who warned the world against war, death, blood, orphanhood...

The story “Clean Monday,” written in 1944, is one of the author’s favorite stories. I. A. Bunin recounts the events of the distant past on behalf of the narrator - a young wealthy man with no special occupation. The hero is in love, and the heroine, as he sees her, makes a strange impression on the reader. She is good-looking, loves luxury, comfort, expensive restaurants, and at the same time she is a “modest student” and has breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat. She has a very critical attitude towards many fashionable works of literature, famous people. And she is clearly not in love with the hero as much as he would like. To his proposal of marriage, she replies that she is not fit to be a wife. “Strange love!” - the hero thinks about this. The heroine’s inner world is revealed completely unexpectedly for him: it turns out that she often goes to churches, is deeply passionate about religion and church rituals. For her, this is not just religiosity - it is the need of her soul, her sense of homeland, antiquity, which is internally necessary for the heroine. The hero believes that these are just “Moscow quirks”, he cannot understand her

and is deeply shocked by her choice when, after their only night of love, she decides to leave and then enter a monastery. For him, the collapse of love is a catastrophe of his entire life, unimaginable suffering. For her, the power of faith and the preservation of her inner world turned out to be higher than love; she decides to devote herself to God, renouncing everything worldly. The author does not reveal the reasons for it moral choice, what influenced her decision - social circumstances or moral and religious quests, but he clearly shows that the life of the soul is not subject to reason. This is especially emphasized in the episode of the last meeting of the heroes in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. The heroes not only see how much they feel each other, they do not control their feelings: the hero “for some reason” wanted to enter the temple, the heroine internally feels her presence. This riddle, the mystery of human feelings, is one of the inherent properties of love in Bunin’s depiction, a tragic and powerful force that can turn a person’s whole life upside down.

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The story “Clean Monday,” written in 1944, is one of the author’s favorite stories. I.A. Bunin recounts the events of the distant past from the perspective of the narrator - a young wealthy man with no special occupation. The hero is in love, and the heroine, as he sees her, makes a strange impression on the reader. She is good-looking, loves luxury, comfort, expensive restaurants, and at the same time she is a “modest student” and has breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat. She has a very critical attitude towards many fashionable works of literature known to people. And she is clearly not in love with the hero as much as he would like. To his proposal of marriage, she replies that she is not fit to be a wife. "Strange love!" - the hero thinks about this. The heroine’s inner world is revealed completely unexpectedly for him: it turns out that she often goes to churches, is deeply passionate about religion and church rituals. For her, this is not just religiosity - it is the need of her soul, her sense of homeland, antiquity, which is internally necessary for the heroine. The hero believes that these are just “Moscow quirks”; he cannot understand her and is deeply shocked by her choice when, after their only night of love, she decides to leave and then go to a monastery. For him, the collapse of love is a catastrophe of his entire life, unimaginable suffering. For her, the power of faith and the preservation of her inner world turned out to be higher than love; she decides to devote herself to God, renouncing everything worldly. The author does not reveal the reasons for her moral choice, what influenced her decision - social circumstances or moral and religious quests, but he clearly shows that the life of the soul is not subject to reason. This is especially emphasized in the episode of the last meeting of the heroes in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. The heroes not only see how much they feel each other, they do not control their feelings: the hero “for some reason” wanted to enter the temple, the heroine internally feels her presence. This riddle, the mystery of human feelings, is one of the inherent properties of love in Bunin’s depiction, a tragic and powerful force that can turn a person’s whole life upside down.